


Expendable

by Qpenguin98



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ???? - Freeform, Angst, Anxiety, Dissociation, M/M, Self-Harm, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), honestly keith just needs someone to listen, i suppose i could call this a vent fic, ketih does some talking and shiro does some listening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 07:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7675105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’ll fight the training dummy until the blood coming off of him jars him back to life. Until he can’t ignore the strain in his muscles or how raggedly he’s breathing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expendable

He does it to relieve the stress, the anger. To take away the dangers of taking it all out on anyone other than himself.

Shallow, randomly placed on his body. It draws away from the possibility of consistency. A misstep in training adds another bruise to his already hurt skin.

It’s never enough.

He’ll snap, lose his temper, do something risky in the battle just to stop for one fucking second.

He doesn’t really care if the outcome is bad for him.

He also does it for the for the emptiness, when his body feels numb enough for him to forget he really exists. To shock him back into reality.

It doesn’t always work.

He’ll fight the training dummy until the blood coming off of him jars him back to life. Until he can’t ignore the strain in his muscles or how raggedly he’s breathing.

He’ll take one last hit and call it good until the next time his brain goes haywire.

Lance starts to notice.

How could he not?

It’s just getting worse

“Have you gotten worse at fighting or are you just training at too high a level?”

His fingers brush over the newest bruise, the scabbed over places on his bare arms.

Keith pulls his hands away from the injuries and glances at him with what he hopes is a convincing look.

“I slipped up during training. It’s fine.”

Lance narrows his eyes.

“Don’t lie to me. You look worse every time I see you.”

“Oh well jeez, if you didn’t like how I looked you could have just told me.”

“Keith.”

He’s been avoiding eye contact and now it’s forced on him.

“Lance I’m fine. It’s not even that bad. I’ve been fighting a higher level dummy to see if I can handle it and it’s not working out like I’d hoped. If it upsets you that much, I’ll stop.”

He can tell Lance doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t say anything, so Keith takes it as a win.

He doesn’t hide them for a reason, to normalize the idea of cuts and bruises on his body to the others.

Lance still asks every time they’re alone, exactly why he keeps looking like he fell off a building.  Keith just kisses him until he’s dizzy and can’t breathe anymore.

He hurts himself, he realizes, by lying to Lance. By lying to the team. And a sick twisted part of him enjoys it, wants to dig that hole deeper and deeper until he’s so far gone he can never recover. Until he’s lied too many times for the team to trust him again.

Until he’s left alone again.

He takes risks in battle that nearly kill him, and he’ll gladly take the gun to his stomach or the swords up to his neck over the others getting hurt.

He doesn’t matter.

He’s never mattered.

\---

He’s found out completely by Lance. His fingers sliding up his arms, up too far, before Keith can realize.

Keith freezes and Lance pulls his hands back, confused, staring at his fingers.

“You’re bleeding.”

He keeps opening and closing his mouth, trying to find the words and failing. He has no back up plan, no lie that he can artfully construct to change the subject, and he’s panicking.

“Keith, why are you bleeding?”

Lance’s voice sounds so small, and Keith doesn’t know if that’s real or if his brain’s just getting away from him again.

“Please just talk to me.”

He snaps.

Standing, pushing Lance off of him, he can feel his anger like a bubble in the back of his throat.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t pretend like you care. It doesn’t matter! This doesn’t matter! It’s pointless to even try!”

He’s shouting now, and Lance looks so _sad_ that Keith just want to pull him close, apologize for everything he’s ever let leave his mouth.

Instead he groans in frustration and leaves.

\---

The dull ache in his head gets worse every time he hits his head back against the wall. His room is dark, lights off, door locked.

He looks at his bloody knuckles and vaguely remembers punching the wall.

His messed up brain is feeding off of the way he left Lance. It’s stirring and crawling and he can’t feel his fingertips anymore.

There’s a knock on his door and he just slams his head back against the wall.

“Keith?”

In reality, he should have expected Shiro, but he’s not thinking straight.

“Lance, he… can you let me in?”

He considers it for a minute, before deciding that he can’t avoid him forever.

Yes you can, his brain tells him. Just isolate yourself until they forget about you.

He gently presses on the door button.

It’s a second before Shiro actually opens the door, and the anticipation has Keith biting into his lip.

“It really isn’t a problem,” Keith says the second he sees him, startling both of them. He pauses before continuing. “Lance was honestly making things bigger than they needed to be.”

Shiro sits on the bed, and Keith doesn’t know whether to be grateful for the space or not.

He takes a breath to speak and Keith just, can’t stop talking.

“You have way more important things to deal with so I don’t even know why you’re here. Like I said, it’s really not important and you, you, you have so many reasons to not be here right now honestly. Why isn’t someone trying to set up an intervention for you? You could use the help, you could use the support. You’re our leader and you try really hard not to let anyone see that you’re not okay, but it’s hard to do that, Shiro, it’s hard to ignore that! Why are you, you… I, you-”

He’s digging his nails into the cut on his arm and he can feel the blood bubbling up under him and drops his eyes from Shiro’s.

“Keith.”

His voice is soft and Keith’s brain is going foggy again. He can’t just sit here looking miserable, he has to do something, he has to move.

He stands and paces, wringing his fingers together, and tries to forget that Shiro’s actually there with him, judging every move he makes.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he says after the silence gets too loud.

“And what am I thinking?”

“That this is some backwards attempt to get your attention. That I’m trying to bring the team down. Anything. It’s not like it isn’t useful.”

Shiro is… a lot quieter than he was expecting, and it’s making him antsy. He glances to see what’s going on with his face, but he can’t read him.

“Useful how?”

“My- what?”

“How does it help?”

He was expecting to be told to stop, that he was putting the whole team at risk with his self destructive tendencies. He didn’t expect honest to god interest.

“My head gets… weird sometimes. Too loud or too quiet. I’m either too angry or I can’t feel anything at all and it, grounds me I guess? With the anger I don’t have to worry about taking it out on anyone else, especially with the training dummy. And with the nothing it brings me back into my body.”

“What?”

Of course he has to explain that too. He chews on his lip a little before continuing.

“My brain gets fuzzy and I can’t feel my fingers or my lips, sometimes my whole body just goes numb if I leave it long enough, and it feels like I’m detached from myself.”

He’s anxious he’s tired he just wants Shiro to leave him alone and yet, he feels better somehow.

“So you hurt yourself to clear your head.”

“When you put it like that it sounds stupid.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say.” Shiro looks regretful that it came out like that, and Keith nods in agreement.

“Yes then. I guess. That’s the simplest way to put it.”

“So what about on the battle field?”

Keith’s blood runs cold.

“What about it?”

“Keith.” His voice is harder than it’s been this whole time.

“It’s… different. It’s more about the rest of you than me.”

He can see Shiro sit up straighter from the corner of his eye.

“What about us make you want to get yourself killed every five minutes?”

“No that’s not- I mean yes kind of- no no it’s more complicated I- Shiro don’t do that.”

He can taste the blood from his lip and he goes silent.

“I’m just trying to understand this.”

“I know,” Keith says under his breath. “I know.”

It’s a long second before he speaks again.

“You’re all so important. Just in general. And it doesn’t really matter if I die or not. There’s so many people you could find to pilot the red lion, I’m so expendable, so why act like I’m not? If there’s something I can do in battle that helps everyone else, it doesn’t matter if I die. I don’t matter. I really don’t. It’s not like I haven’t known it from the beginning, and I’m fine with that. If I end up dying for all of you, I’d feel better knowing you’re all alright.”

“Jesus Christ, Keith.”

He looks at Shiro, who looks sad and a little bit scared and just all around worried. Keiths’ lip is back between his teeth, and he’s going to end up giving a new definition to split lip at this rate.

“Sorry I-”

“Don’t.”

He shuts up, head feeling heavier than usual.

“You’re not expendable. I’m not sure when you started telling yourself that, but we need you. You’re a part of this now. You’re part of a family, Keith. We all care so much about you, and no one wants to see you die.”

When did his mouth start tasting like copper?

“Keith, please look at me.”

Oh right, he bit his lips to shreds. Haha, how could he forget that?

“Keith?”

Is he floating? No he can’t be, because Shiro’s here with him. Shiro doesn’t float, he’s the most grounded thing on this ship.

Garbled speech makes it’s way through his ears, but he can’t understand any of it. There’s more copper in his mouth and there’s something wet on his fingers.

He can’t feel his fingers?

Where is he?

He’s moving, or his body is. He can feel the sway of someone sitting him down.

He tries digging his nails into his arm again, and nothing happens.

Oh.

He’ll just have to ride this one out.

It’s been a while since he’s had to float outside of himself for this long.

It comes back slowly, the tingling feeling in his lips, his eyes blinking, twisting his hands back together, slumping forward.

There’s an arm on his shoulder. He looks up. Shiro looks back at him with tired eyes and an unreadable expression.

“How long-”

“About an hour.”

It’s been so long since he’s let himself sit through that, and he mentally berates himself for letting it happen in front of Shiro.

He repeats his apologies into his knees. Shiro just tightens his grip around him.

Shiro speaks first.

“I know it’s difficult. And I’m sorry you think we all thought you didn’t matter. But, you can’t keep this up. It’s not healthy.”

“I know but-”

“Just… start small. Try not to be as reckless during battles. Try to find someone when your head gets fuzzy. Anything but what you’re doing.”

“I can’t… it’s not gonna happen right away.”

“I know, I just want you to try, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

“Alright,” he says. And it’s small and honest. “Shiro I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Earlier when I,” he makes a weird, frustrated hand motion around his head

“Don’t be,” his voice sounds sincere and genuine and Keith can’t help but to nod.

“Are you alright now?”

He nods again.

“Did you want to be alone or did you want me to stay?”

“You don’t have to stay.”

“Keith.”

“…If you want you can stay.”

It’s the best Shiro’s going to get, so he accepts and stays.

Keith feels a comfortable calm for the first time in months.

**Author's Note:**

> BOIIIIIIII IT'S 5:43 IN THE MORNING AND I AM DEEEEEEEEAD  
> HOOOO NOW THATS WHAT I CALL PROJECTION ON A CHARACTER  
> HAAAAAAH  
> FUCK


End file.
